Oh my, that happened quickly. We’re starting the 5 month Eating Peace Process program this very week. The first two live 90 minute inquiry calls are today Tuesday 11/14 at 4 pm PT and/or Thursday 11/16 at 8 am PT. Our last telecalls are April 24 and 26. When you sign up for Eating Peace Process, you’re sent off to watch the recorded learning presentations, and do the exercises involved. There’s room for only a few more.
In today’s video, I share an exercise similar to one inside the Eating Peace Process: studying how we’re feeling at a huge holiday gathering, surrounded by people and food, and feeling uncomfortable about the food.
As someone who once was tortured by eating issues of every kind, I love working with people who suffer around eating. It doesn’t matter if you’ve practically killed yourself with food, eating, or exercising (like I did, running many miles a day at early hours of the morning or stuffing myself to beyond-full with food) or if you’ve felt upset about wanting to lose ten pounds–your suffering is yours. It hurts. It’s upsetting and painful, and something you’d like to understand, or “get over”.
I tried so many things….programs, diets, plans, structures. Studying my own off-balance experience with eating was the only thing that really helped. I had to find my own awareness of what was true, or not true, for me.
It wasn’t true that I needed to control my every mouthful. It was true for me that I needed to look at my intense cravings, fears and anger about life and other people.
But let’s keep it simple today.
Have you had worries about the holiday season coming upon us? Is where you live filled with food, parties, drink, consumption, getting, hunting, acquiring, gathering?
If you’ve had this experience of discomfort around people gathering for holidays or parties, including food….then you can do the following exercise today:
Imagine you’re standing in front of a huge smorgasbord of food. The tables are laden with everything you’ve ever most loved to eat, from your childhood dishes, to the sweetest tastes you’ve ever enjoyed. Every kind of food is on that table you can imagine, from sweet, to savory, to spicy, to rich and buttery.
How do you judge the foods? What can it bring you or give you, if you eat it? What will you have, if you consume it? What will it help you forget, or lose focus of, if you take it in?
What else is going on, that you find difficult emotionally? What’s missing from this moment?
What do you find both most wonderful, and most horrendous, about this moment with the table before you filled with all that food, and whatever else is happening around this festivity?
Identifying these stressful beliefs can be profound, because to give words to the feelings running within that are so uncomfortable brings awareness.
I see things like “Wow….I’m believing there is no pleasure at this event except for food. The people are boring or they make me nervous. I don’t fit in. I have to pretend I’m interested. I’m not good enough.”
Once identified, the thoughts are very, very interesting to take through inquiry.
It’s so important to see what it is that makes you feel the craving, or anxiety, or worry, or sadness in the first place.
It’s not easy to see it…but when you do, there’s something you can do with the awareness: Question It.
Who would I be without my story that the only thing fun at this event, is the food?